Phil Hogan (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The national co-ordinating committee, chaired by the Minister of State with responsibility for housing and planning, was established as a response to the report of the advisory group on unfinished housing developments and has harnessed the expertise and goodwill of the construction and banking sectors, local authorities, residents' representatives and NAMA.

Local authorities are continuing to pursue developers and others to comply with their obligations under planning regulations. Developer-, funder- or receiver-funded site resolution processes will remain the main vehicle for tackling unfinished developments. Five hundred and fifty three developments have been brought to a resolution point in this way over the past 12 months. It is expected that such processes will continue to make significant inroads into the remaining 992 inhabited unfinished developments.

Additionally, my Department has available a special resolution fund of €10 million, which was provided in budget 2014, to address the completion of infrastructure in developments which could not be resolved because of absences of, or inadequacies in, planning securities and other unforeseen cost and risk issues. The fund will be operated by the local authorities and will be carefully targeted mainly to address difficulties with public infrastructure that have arisen in certain developments included in the Department's national housing development survey 2013.

It is also necessary to explore resolution of these developments which appear to be commercially unviable owing to location, build quality, commercial demand or other factors and where the most prudent course of action may be to seek the agreement of owners or funders to clear all or part of the site. Accordingly, the national co-ordinating committee established a group to oversee the development of a strategy for these residual developments and work with stakeholders in identifying and agreeing such sites for full or partial clearance, thereby improving the lives of existing residents and removing dangerous structures from public access. Some 40 such developments have been initially identified and fall to be addressed by the relevant owners, receivers and funders. The estates identified by the funders have not been identified to my Department for commercially sensitive reasons. The costs associated with this strategy are equally sensitive and I do not hold this information. Responsibility for the clearance of unviable estates remains with the funders and I welcome their participation in this pragmatic approach which will further underscore a return to a properly functioning property market.

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